


Sharing a bed

by Margot_Lescargot



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Established Seagale (just), Fluffy Ending, M/M, Minor spoilers for Foxglove Summer, POV Thomas Nightingale, Stream of Consciousness, angst (maybe?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23416732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_Lescargot/pseuds/Margot_Lescargot
Summary: "Sharing a bed".  A curious phrase.  So innocuous and yet so pregnant with meaning at the same time.   A strange euphemism - borne of necessity, he supposed.  Nothing that would shock the womenfolk or the servants.----A meditation, of sorts, on how strange it might be for Nightingale to share a bed with someone else, and sleep alongside them, for the first time.
Relationships: Thomas Nightingale/Alexander Seawoll
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Sharing a bed

“Sharing a bed”. A curious phrase. So innocuous and yet so pregnant with meaning at the same time. A strange euphemism - borne of necessity, he supposed. And hypocrisy. Nothing that would shock the womenfolk or the servants if overheard.

He’d shared a bed - shared beds - all his life. With Alice, when they were small, bunking up on holiday in Ireland; with other squirts, when necessary at Casterbrook camp-outs. Back then - before life and longing and desire had arrived - sharing a bed was an adventure, a break from the norm and routine, an opportunity to defy lights out and the usual boring night-time restrictions placed upon them by adults.

He’d shared a bed, beds, with others when he himself was an adult. On the odd trek through wild - if not actively hostile, then very definitely un-British - territory; relishing the novelty and the foreignness of it all, the food, the habitat, the language... the magic. Looking up at the same stars, but among alien corn. And - again, later - bedding down in shifts, in draughty abandoned farmhouses in Northern France and the Low Countries, in full fatigues and always with one eye open, one ear cocked. 

But sharing a bed? In the less innocuous sense? Hardly. There had been snatched moments, most often up against a locked door - a necessary practicality - pleasure and release sought and given frantically and in a fever of discovery, with David - and with others, he could not deny. There were chaps he knew - with whom he traded confidences later, on occasion, because how could one survive otherwise? - who actually enjoyed the risk, relished the thrill of it, the illicit shiver of exposure, of shame; chaps who _liked_ the danger - inexplicably, he considered - and found arousal in it for its own sake. 

He had never felt like that and nor, he was fairly certain, had David. They had been merely playing the hand they were dealt. But he could not be absolutely certain, of course. It was not something they had ever discussed, ever been able to discuss, ever thought it would be appropriate to discuss. There had not been the opportunity – existing as they did, as they all did, within a constantly revolving network of voluntary spies - to debate their relationship, indeed the phrase, the very notion, didn’t exist in those days, in that context. As David would have said, the constituent parts of the equation were comprehensible, but when arranged together, in that particular order, the meaning of the whole fell apart. 

Just as they had.

There had barely been the opportunity to mutter an endearment, to whisper in passing an arrangement to meet, somewhere quiet, somewhere isolated, somewhere other people - _normal_ people - didn’t want to be. The very idea of sharing a bed, of glorying in the purposes for which that bed was surely made, luxuriating in the proximity and heat of another desired set of limbs, abandoning oneself to a wealth of sweat and spunk and carnal idolatry - of joining, and licking, and tasting, and touching - of fucking - for an entire night? Undisturbed and unconcerned about being so? No. That was not to be thought of. Even as a distant dream. On the few, very few, occasions they had tumbled on a bed, back then, it had - as ever - been of sorrowfully and necessarily short duration and the covers straightened hurriedly afterwards, lest anyone suspect.

And now, lifetimes later, here was this. Actually sharing a bed with someone, in the fullest extent of what that meaning could construe. He turned his head on the pillow to look at Seawoll, sleeping, breathing evenly. Sleeping together. “Sleeping together”. It was as much a euphemism as the other, and as pointlessly deployed. He remembered it entering common usage in the 1960s, when London was, briefly, the centre of the world - or so it seemed - and all around him were shedding their inhibitions and embracing life for all it was worth, while he mouldered, still, within the Folly; the lacerating trauma of war and its aftermath - David’s suicide a fallen leaf in an avalanche - giving way to little more than a bemused numbness as the decades ticked by.

This was, of course, before he’d been brought to acknowledge the strange reversal of time within himself - but in noone else it seemed - which felt like yet one more cruel joke the universe was playing at his expense. Trapped still - inexorably - in this prison of his past and his nightmares and his unutterable grief, he wasn’t even to be allowed the release of easeful death - after a duty well-served, beyond well-served, surely? - but compelled, instead, to continue in this place indefinitely. 

In an attempt to rationalise the implications - or so he now believed - he had elected to view this latest curse with superficial flippancy, a "gift horse". But the words were ashes, and he withdrew further from the world, from those even who had been left after the final battle, ashamed, almost, of his renewing vitality - as each of them sank further towards old age and decrepitude - which was as unearned as it was unwanted.

But now, he thought – and really, he had no idea – had the de-ageing been of some use, to some purpose? Was this what it had been for? First the advent of Peter and his consequent revivification, gradually and unequivocally, and without him even realising it was necessary. It had felt like emerging from a chrysalis, painfully and slowly. The colours brighter, the sounds sharper, people, beings, action. Life. And then, something more. Something unexpected, something barely remembered, buried under decades of disuse and disavowal. And the thing that had felt like nothing but the incessant buzzing of a bothersome fly for the last twenty years or so suddenly coalesced and came into focus, turned out to be something entirely unexpected, and yet familiar. Longed-for. It became Seawoll. Another person, _the_ person. Alex. 

He couldn’t quite understand it, couldn’t quite comprehend how or why they now stood where they did. How it had happened. Had he, dazzled by the light, been borne along by the larger man’s interest, his attention, his desire? No, that wasn’t fair. He had merely opened his eyes and there he was. Smiling quizzically, ready to take him into his arms, perceiving his flaws and receiving him anyway, regardless. The world could not have seemed a stranger place after the last century, and this the strangest thing of all. But he was no fool. If there was comfort, and comradeship, and joy - and love - to be offered then he was certainly not going to turn them away.

So here they now were. Sharing a bed. Sleeping together. Alex mumbled something indistinguishable in his sleep and turned onto his side. He was still entirely unused to sharing this space - this, the most vulnerable space that one could occupy, that of complete abandonment to sleep and oblivion - with another. He had never done it before, not like this; he had no frame of reference. But he had always been a quick study. David had even favoured him with that compliment, and he the quickest study of all. He rolled onto his side and wrapped one arm around Alex’s broad back, who, half-awake, muttered something and grasped his hand. He rubbed one cheek against Alex’s shoulder-blade and let out a long breath.

**Author's Note:**

> “Carnal Idolatry” is the name of my new punk band.


End file.
